DST (Tajima Embroidery)

DST is a machine embroidery format invented by the Japanese company Tajima and become the de facto standard of the industry. Inside it is not a picture but a sequence of commands for the head: the offset of the needle relative to the previous stitch, a thread color change, a trim, a jump. It is understood by industrial Tajima machines and by home machines from Brother, Janome, Bernina and Husqvarna.

A map is turned into embroidery for the sake of an object: the outline of your home city on a hoodie, a district scheme on a bag, a gift with the coordinates of a place. This is a genre of map art in its own right, where what matters is not the scale but a recognizable pattern of streets.

The output is a single .dst file: the lines of the map turn into paths of stitches, every layer is assigned its own thread color, and a color change command is placed between layers. The design is automatically fitted into the hoop with a small margin at the edges; the default hoop size is 200 by 200 millimeters, and the density is about four stitches per millimeter. Movements that are too long are broken into parts, because the machine has a limit on the length of a single stitch.

Pick a small fragment of the city: at the size of a palm a block reads well, while a whole metropolis will turn into a solid blot of threads.